Bladen County, NC - Bladen County Will Abstracts Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/nc/ncfiles.htm File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Fred A. Olds An Abstract of North Carolina Wills From about 1760 to about 1800 Supplementing Grimes' Abstract of NC Wills 1663-1760 Prepared from the originals and other data by Fred A. Olds Collector for the NC Hall of History, and presented by him Edition limited to 125 copies, of which 100 are For the counties in the State Privately Printed & Bound by "The Orphan's Friend" Printery & Bindery, Oxford, NC 1925 The North Carolina Wills In 1906 the late Secretary of State J. Bryan Grimes published a very valuable book containing abstracts of the "State Wills," as they are called; that is to say the wills during the period between 1663 and 1760, when it was required that all should be filed in the office of the secretary of the Province of North Carolina. After 1760 it was permitted to have the wills in the counties. A request has arisen for a book covering abstracts of wills to 1800, from 1760, and this volume is the answer to it; an answer made under innumerable difficulties. This 40-year period covers the last 15 years of the Provincial Period, the 8 years of the war of the Revolution, 1775-1783, and the 17 years after the Revolution. A good many wills of date prior to 1760 will be found in the book, there having been failure to send these to the secretary of the Province. The losses of original wills have been great. It was said in 1752 that many court documents had then been lost. Frequent changes in the location of the seat of government contributed to those losses, but fires caused a great percentage. Of the present 100 counties, 32 existed in 1775, when British rule and the Provincial or Colonial system ended with the flight in June of Governor Josiah Martin. Between 1775 and 1800 there were formed 28 counties, three of these in the closing days of 1799, namely Ashe, Greene and Washington. Thus the total number when 1800 began was 60. Most wills are carried only in the will books, the originals having ceased to exist. Of the will books, many have been lost. In some cases only the year of the probate appears; in some the year and the month, and in some the year, month and day. The County Court met four times a year. In some cases there is no date of probate given in the records, and in such cases there is nothing else to do but set down the date of the will. Great carelessness occurred in probating and also in recording wills. In a few cases some wills are recorded in the office of the Register of Deeds and others in the Clerk's office. There are many errors in the spelling, not only of family but of Christian names, and so far as possible these errors have been corrected. Not a few of these errors are due to the transcribers of the wills. As far as possible, the original wills have been used in making these abstracts, but only a small portion of the originals now exist.